Greetings from beautiful Belgrade! With the Hackaday crew arriving over the last couple of days, preparations in full swing, and the excitement is building for Hackaday Belgrade 2018 on Saturday. Here’s all the news you need to know. If you haven’t gotten tickets yet, you can’t say we didn’t warn you! We’ve sold out. But don’t despair: there’s a waitlist, so get your name in now if you still want to get in. The final conference schedule has just been released and it’s super. We’re having a meetup Friday night at 20:00 at the Bajloni Bar and Beyond, join us! Folks are already meeting up using the conference’s chat. Hang out there even if you’re not in town. Subscribe to Hackaday’s YouTube channel so that you don’t miss out when we start the live stream If you’re looking for something to do in town this weekend, don’t miss [Brian Benchoff]’s Ode to Belgrade and especially some … [Read more...] about Hackaday Belgrade 2018 is Sold Out: We Can’t Wait for Saturday

Solo: A Star Wars Story has gone through as many ups and downs in production as any film before it. Its directors were fired and the entire movie was reportedly shot over again, but it made it through all that turmoil and its release date is now mere days away. It should come as no surprise that it’s tracking to be yet another Star Wars record-breaking blockbuster. According to Deadline, Solo is tracking to taking somewhere between $130 million to $170 million over Memorial Day weekend. If it opens north of $140 million, it will set a record for the holiday weekend. The current record holder is X-Men: The Last Stand, which opened in 2006 to the tune of $139 million. Solo’s projected cume for the weekend figures to be much bigger overseas. Projections anticipate it’ll take in between $150 million and $170 million. It’s safe to assume the global take for Solo can be well over $300 million and as high as $340 million. Not too shabby for a movie mired in nonstop … [Read more...] about Solo: A Star Wars Story looks like it’ll be another smash hit

Three years after getting started with a plan to change how people shop for quality beef products, Seattle-based Crowd Cow announced an $8 million Series A funding round on Thursday. The round is being led by Madrona Venture Group. New investors include actor Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures, and existing investors including Joe Montana of Liquid 2 Ventures also participated. The online marketplace, founded by startup veterans Joe Heitzeberg (Madrona Venture Labs) and Ethan Lowry (Urbanspoon), has seen significant growth since 2015 when they launched with a unique digital butcher platform in which meat lovers could choose beef varieties and cuts and help crowdfund a sustainably raised animal from independent ranchers. The financing will help Crowd Cow grow by adding more ranches and farms to its platform, improving its supply chain, and boosting the search for new beef, chicken and pork flavors. “Crowd Cow is applying technology to a market that … [Read more...] about Crowd Cow raises $8M as startup continues to grow its digital marketplace for craft meats

The National Transportation Safety Board has released its preliminary report from the investigation into the fatal collision between an Uber self-driving vehicle and a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona earlier this year. According to the report, Uber’s self-driving system classified the pedestrian (who was wheeling a bicycle at the time) as a bicycle, and decided 1.3 seconds before the collision that an emergency braking manouvre was needed to avoid a crash. However, the NTSB report says that Uber’s self-driving vehicles are not programmed to emergency brake, and instead rely on the human driver to intervene in such situations. The four-page report provides a detailed look at the circumstances surrounding the crash, giving us the most complete picture yet of how the vehicle was configured. The real details of what caused this crash seem to come down to Uber’s safety decisions, and are buried at the bottom of the second page. Don't Miss: Amazon has a wireless keyboard … [Read more...] about Uber’s self-driving car saw pedestrian before fatal crash, but was programmed not to brake

The next time you go shopping in the big orange hardware store, take a moment to consider what these employees have to say about what life is really like working for Home Depot. As a supplement to Home Depot billionaire Ken Langone’s new book “I Love Capitalism!”, we have run three separate installments of true stories from Home Depot employees, who have a lot to say about pay, working conditions, and quality of management. Today, one more peek inside Big Orange. A real budget in 2018 For a full time night position [merchandiser] it paid $10/hr... I did the math, and I think I still have the employee enrollment materials, if you max out your 401k contributions and healthcare options you would only be making $6/hr. On top of putting 30 miles of wear and tear on your car every night. (I live in a central location, one guy drove 400 miles every week as he lived further north) And there’s no employee discount. Instead you get ‘deals’ on outside … [Read more...] about Home Depot Employees Are Hot, Thirsty, Harassed, and Poor

Question: Is it possible that this news story turned me into a Republican? Answer: Absolutely not. But still, this story from the San Diego Union-Tribune has got me in a tizzy. Meanley & Son Hardware has given out free popcorn from an old-fashioned machine for about a quarter of a century. Last month, that came to a halt when the health department, acting on an anonymous tip from an anonymous destroyer of fun, rolled up to the hardware store and said, to paraphrase, NOPE. Health officials told Meanley, who actually sounds very nicely, that in order to keep handing out 30-40 free bags of popcorn per day, he’d need to “install a three-basin sink to clean and sterilize the popcorn popper,” and submit to regular restaurant-style health inspections. So he rolled the cheery red machine into storage; there was no joy in Mudville; Santa doesn’t exist; et cetera. The thing that gets me is this: the health department and their grinch of a tipster have a point, of … [Read more...] about Government shuts down hardware store’s old-timey popcorn machine because fun is illegal

One day during the 2017 offseason, I went to Paul Brown Stadium to interview Cincinnati Bengals owner Mike Brown. Like a lot of grandfathers, Brown enjoys reading history books. At the stadium, his all-glass office is ringed in bookshelves that run partway up the walls, though not so far that they obscure a dazzling view of the Ohio River. Jack Brennan, who was then the Bengals’ head flack, had encouraged me to mention that I was writing a book about presidents and the books they’d written, as a way to break the ice with Brown. I followed the play call, and Brown indeed warmed right up. But then he asked me something: “It was always my side’s belief that Obama didn’t write his book. Tell me what your view of that is.” I was honestly stunned. I knew the birther-ish theory—that a desperate Obama had convinced Bill Ayers to ghostwrite Dreams from My Father—but I didn’t expect to hear it from an NFL owner, a man with an Ivy League … [Read more...] about NFL Owners Can Be Shitheads Without Donald Trump’s Help

Early this week, the studio behind Path of Exile received a majority investment from a Chinese corporation called Tencent. If that’s a name you don’t know, it’s worth learning, because Tencent is, without a question, the largest company in video games. Yet, many fans don’t even know it exists. Tencent has its hands in so many companies that it sometimes competes with itself. Last year, for example, a rivalry broke out between the battle royale game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and the game that would ape its popular formula, Fortnite. The developers of PUBG fired shots to the press, accusing Fortnite of “replicating the experience for which PUBG is known.” Fortnite went on to become the biggest game in the world. Outside observers may have seen this as a bitter rivalry, but to a certain Chinese publisher, it didn’t matter who won. See, Tencent owns 40% of Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite. Tencent also has a minority stake in … [Read more...] about The World’s Biggest Game Company Just Keeps Getting Bigger

The standard Honda Civic Type R is incredibly practical, with up to 46.3 cubic feet of cargo space when the back seats are lowered. Yet engineers at Honda's Swindon, UK factory ("A place where dreams become a reality") have taken it even further with Project P, a concept version of a Type R pickup truck.The engineers took a preproduction Civic Type R and removed most of the upper bodywork behind the car's B-pillar, replacing it with some roll bars and a diamond-plate metal bed. The hatchback's signature giant rear wing is still present, and in a clever touch, can be removed to permit easy access to the bed for loading cargo. The work was all completed outside of working hours as a passion project for the engineers.Mechanically, the car retains the Type R's turbocharged 2.0-liter inline-four engine, with 306 horsepower and 295 pound-feet of torque, as well as its six-speed manual transmission and adaptive suspension. Honda says the pickup concept will hit 62 miles per hour in … [Read more...] about Honda engineers build Civic Type R pickup truck concept

Democracy Dies in Darkness Sections Home Try 1 month for $1 Username Sign In Account Profile Newsletters & Alerts Gift Subscriptions Contact Us Help Desk Subscribe Account Profile Newsletters & Alerts Gift Subscriptions Contact Us Help Desk Accessibility for screenreader Retropolis by Alex Horton May 24 at 7:01 AM Email the author The williwaw gusts swirled thick fog among transport ships off Attu Island, and the waiting infantrymen nervously mulled the name of their landing site: Massacre Bay. Native Unangans were slaughtered there by Russian traders in the 18th century, leaving few left who had survived disease when Japanese troops captured the island in June 1942. Nearly a year later, 2,000 U.S. troops waded onto the icy shore, bracing for the dreaded shriek of artillery on the westernmost edge of the Aleutian Islands chain. Weeks before it would become one of the deadliest battles in the war, … [Read more...] about Thousands of Japanese fought in a bloody World War II battle for the Aleutians. Only 28 survived.